Saturday, 5 November 2011

Music and Creativity

Has it ever occurred to you that music can take you to a high place, not as in make you rich but bring out your creative mind, that is why it is said that "Music is food for the soul". 
Creativity is like a breeze: fleeting, invisible and just as hard to catch. Some people relax and let it come to them. Some people work hard to bring it to bear. I’m going to tell you how you can do something enjoyable and effortlessly infuse yourself with creativity. Am a student of Information Technology and in IT we offer a course called Programming, when you want to write programs, you have to think very hard to make sure you write a very good and creative program. so when i want to write programs i put on my earphones and listen to music and crank out some awesome codes and programs. That’s the philosophical and perhaps even spiritual explanation. On the physical side, music charges you up by waking the mind and energising your body. Ever tapped your feet to the beat of a favourite song? Fast paced music gets your heart pumping and every single cell in your body ready to get creative.

Simply relaxing is too passive. Trying hard to force creativity doesn’t work well. Listening to music allows you to actively pursue creativity yet keep a fairly light chase. Once your creativity muse deems you worthy, she’ll come to you.

So what’s the key to selecting music? Variety. You need to have fast paced and slow soothing and everything in between. If you only have fast paced pop/rock songs, your mind will shut down from exhaustion. Intersperse that rapid flow of music with a graceful waltz or relaxing cello solo to give your mind a jig. This prevents your mind from getting stuck into a rut and also provides continuous stimulation. The shuffle function of your favourite music player is your friend here.

You’re encouraged to try incorporating music that evokes strong emotions. I’ve got a few songs which greatly cause sadness, intense lightheartedness, lulling calmness or have touching, awe-inspiring lyrics. I get tears sometimes (and discreetly holding them back of course). I smile uncontrollably sometimes. I believe experiencing the many facets of human emotions is part of coaxing creativity, of tapping creativity.